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RIO DE JANEIRO—Moments after Canadian rowers Patricia Obee and Lindsay Jennerich finished a comfortable second in a race that launched them into their first-ever Olympic final, the duo disappeared.

Never mind the usual chat with the media — they left that to their coach, Aussie Tom Morris. And by the time Morris was telling reporters about how the members of Canada’s lightweight women’s double are in the best shape of their lives — possessed of the second-fastest time among the field and still equipped with “extra gears” they’d yet to use — he said the athletes had completed a 30-minute cool-down on nearby stationary bikes and were already en route to the team hotel for a recovery-boosting dip in a cold tub.

With the Rio Olympic regatta truncated by two days of cancellations due to wind, Obee and Jennerich won’t get the day of rest between Thursday’s semifinal and Friday’s final that’s often customary at events of this stature. So unnecessary expenditures of energy have been eliminated. Before the media blackout went into effect Jennerich, the 34-year-old veteran, described the double’s Olympic existence as hermit-like. While multiple members of Jennerich’s family are here, along with boyfriend Gabe Bergen, a 2012 Olympic silver medallist for Canada in the since-disbanded men’s eight, she said she had no plans to see any of them.

“I’m not talking on the phone and I’m not making arrangements to go see them out in public,” Jennerich said. “As much as they care, it’s hard for them to totally understand. It’s best to stick with the people that 100 per cent understand what you’re going through.”

The number of people who make that cut, according to Obee, is three: The scullers and their coach. And they seem to like it that way.

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“Our training’s been independent of everyone,” Jennerich was saying earlier this week. “I care about everyone. I want to see everyone do very well. But I don’t take on their performances as an indication of what we want to do.”

Indeed, there’s been at least a little misery among the Canadian camp here. The men’s quadruple sculls — a linchpin of the strategy to forgo the men’s eight in favour of small boats and an expected podium threat — lost in Thursday’s B final and finished eighth. Canada’s only lightweight men’s boat in the Olympics, a four, was promptly eliminated from medal contention after it finished dead-last in its opening heat. And as much as there remain promising signs — the men’s four and women’s eight both looked strong in qualifying for respective finals — Canada’s lightweights didn’t seem keen on expanding the circle.

“It’s really important we stay inside that group of three people,” Obee, 24, said earlier this week. “Because not everyone’s going to be happy on our team with their results.”

Obee said that four years ago in London, where they failed to advance to the final and finished a disappointing seventh, she and Jennerich felt like black sheep within their own team.

“And I do not have bad feelings for anyone who ignored us during that time, because it’s their time,” Obee said. “They were winning medals and they needed to focus on doing that. And we didn’t have a great aura around us, because we weren’t doing well. It’s hard sometimes. I feel like a bit of a jerk, but I understand that they’re going to understand. I totally respect them for being like, ‘I don’t want to be around people who aren’t doing well.’ ”

If the duo’s honesty is stark, it’s by design.

“One of the things we’ve (stressed) is really being honest and open about our nerves and fears,” said Morris. “They’ve been very honest with their fears and their nerves. By being honest and upfront about it, they’ve been able to deal with them very well.”

As Morris pointed out, at the Olympics, everybody’s good. In lightweight rowing, everybody’s 125 pounds, give or take. Every boat weighs 60 pounds, more or less.

“Everything is as close as can be to being a level playing field,” Morris said. “The big difference is the training you did up to that day. And what’s going on between your ears.”

Morris said that mentally, “there’s something special” about Obee and Jennerich.

“Boats with two people in them, you’ve got to have some magic. And you’ve got to be able to go a little bit crazy,” the coach said.

And by a “little bit crazy,” he’s referring to the ability to discover those “extra gears” in a podium-owning moment. When Obee and Jennerich resurface at the start line on Friday, the search of their lives will begin.

“We’ve always known we have that. We’ve always known we don’t need to use it (until the medals are on the line),” said Morris. “It’s the ability to have enough confidence in yourself to let go and become automatic. And trust yourself and the other person to be so in tune with each other that you can take yourself somewhere you couldn’t do on any other day … I think they go there.

“They go there deeper than anyone I’ve ever seen before.”

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